Stress classification by separation of respiratory modulations in heart rate variability using orthogonal subspace projection

The influence of respiration on the heart rate is a phenomenon known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia. However, effects of respiration are often ignored in studies of heart rate variability. In this paper, we take respiratory influences into account by separating the tachogram in two components, one related to respiration and one residual component, using orthogonal subspace projection. We demonstrate that it is important to remove respiratory influences during classification of rest and mental stress. Using merely the original tachogram, the classification accuracy is 57.13%, while the use of the residual tachogram results in an almost perfect classification (accuracy = 97.88%).